Maurice S. Brookhart (born 1942) is an American chemist, and professor of chemistry at the

University of Houston The University of Houston (; ) is a Public university, public research university in Houston, Texas, United States. It was established in 1927 as Houston Junior College, a coeducational institution and one of multiple junior colleges formed in ...

since 2015. Brookhart received his bachelor's degree from

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

in 1964. He received his PhD in 1968 from the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

, in

physical organic chemistry Physical organic chemistry, a term coined by Louis Hammett in 1940, refers to a discipline of organic chemistry that focuses on the relationship between chemical structures and chemical reaction, reactivity, in particular, applying experimental to ...

where his thesis advisor was

Saul Winstein Saul Winstein (October 8, 1912 – November 23, 1969) was a Jewish Canadian chemist who discovered the ''Winstein reaction.'' He argued a non-classical cation was needed to explain the stability of the norbornyl cation. This fueled a debate ...

. After an NSF postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1968 and a

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...

postdoctoral fellowship at Southampton University, England. In 1969, he joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina, where he stayed until 2015, when he joined the University of Houston as a professor of chemistry. His research group is noted for its research in the general area of synthetic and mechanistic

organometallic chemistry Organometallic chemistry is the study of organometallic compounds, chemical compounds containing at least one chemical bond between a carbon atom of an organic molecule and a metal, including alkali, alkaline earth, and transition metals, and so ...

. A recent major thrust has been the development of post-metallocene catalysts based upon late transition metal (Ni and Pd) complexes for olefin coordination polymerization. They carry out their mechanistic investigation of the polymerization reactions primarily by low temperature IR and NMR spectroscopies. The work provides a detailed understanding of catalyst resting states and relative intermediates. A second major focus of Brookhart's group concerns fundamental studies of C-H and C-C bond activations by transition metal complexes and the incorporation of these bond activation steps into catalytic cycles. They have successfully demonstrated catalysis of the ortho-alkylation of aromatic ketones, alkyl aldehyde isomerization, hydroacylation, and the dehydrogenation of alkoxy silanes to generate silyl enol ethers. Recent work on alkane metathesis has received attention.Goldman, Alan S.; Roy, Amy H.; Huang, Zheng; Ahuja, Ritu; Schinski, William; Brookhart, Maurice. Catalytic Alkane Metathesis by Tandem Alkane Dehydrogenation-Olefin Metathesis. Science (Washington, DC, United States)(2006), 312(5771), 257–261. He has over 300 publications in the scientific literature and holds over 22 US patents. He is a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brookhart, Maurice Living people Johns Hopkins University alumni University of California, Los Angeles alumni University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences 21st-century American chemists 1942 births University of Houston faculty